The Missing Ingredient Podcast

In this episode we interview James Corcoran. James is currently the Head of Product at Mobalytics, a gaming analytics company based in Santa Monica. He previously founded stage.gg, a site that was essentially the ESPN of the gaming world that published information on everything esports. Stage.gg was acquired by Mobalytics in 2017 and has since ceased operation. We talked with James about his inspiration for starting stage.gg, how it became such a rapid success, and why he chose to go the acquisition route as opposed to raising money and continuing to work on stage.gg

If you’re interested in the esports industry, then have a listen because we really get into the nitty gritty on this one.

In this episode we chat with Blake Overholt. Blake grew up in Sacramento, California before heading off to UCSB and majoring in Global Studies. He is now an experienced tech recruiter working for the SF-based CRM software company Insightly. 

Blake, as many people do, had a roundabout path to his current position-- his first job out of college was as a cigar salesman in the Florida Keys. Now as a recruiter, Blake was able to share some amazing insights about how to stand out in the application process.

In this episode we sit down with Nate Bills. Nate grew up in Palo Alto before attending UCSB to study Psychology. He is now an Implementation Manager on the Customer Success team at ProCore Technologies in their New York office. We discussed how he started his career in sales and why he ultimately decided to transition into Customer Success. Nate shared what it’s like being an introvert in a customer facing role and how he earns trust with his team a to create a work schedule that improves his fitness and professional performance.

In this episode, we interview Noah Portes Chaikin. Noah is a senior software engineer at Code Climate. Code Climate creates analytics software for development teams so they can evaluate code risks and tie performance metrics to code changes. In our conversation, we learned about how Noah got into software engineering without a college degree, including how he taught himself the technical skills necessary to land his first developer job. We also discussed why Noah prefers working at startups vs. larger organizations and how that's contributed to his professional growth. Noah also shared his take on hiring, and what he looks for when hiring engineers. 

In this episode, we interview Laurence Hall. Laurence is a good friend and experienced tech sales guru. Laurence is a Sales Representative at Newsela. Newsela is education tech startup dedicated to transforming the way students learn and improving literacy rates around the world. In our conversation, we discuss what to look for in a good sales organization and what skills are vital to being a great sales person. We also dove into philosophy, martial arts, and making the tough transition from college life to the real world.

In this episode, we interview Jamie Kent. Jamie is a Software Engineer at Parabola. Parabola is an SF-based startup building products to give knowledge workers the capabilities of engineers. Jamie is a UPenn alum, Fulbright scholar recipient and all around badass person. In our conversation we talked about how Jamie's Fulbright research project took her to South America, where she helped teach Chilean youths computer science fundamentals. We also got into how she transitioned into software engineering without a computer science background as well as the non-profit she co-founded called Women in Sports Tech, which aims to provide growth opportunities for women in the sports tech industry. 

In this episode, we interview Corie Miller. Corie is a product manager at #BUILTBYGIRLS. #BUILTBYGIRLS provides young women in high school and college who are interested in tech with career development resources, community, events, and much more. In our conversation, Corie takes us through what it's like to work in product management and explains in detail her most recent project to completely redesign the BUILTBYGIRLS marketing website. Corie was a Physics major in college and we discuss why Corie decided to skip a career in science and work in tech and  how she transitioned to being a product manager. Last but not least Corie explains the product resources she uses to continue learning about the craft.